Yesterday was setsubun and i spent the class time with the special education kids. I took a video and hopefully i will be able to post it here on the blog soon. I took pictures and will update them after the weekend. This weekend is company training in Sapporo, so it is always nice to see all the people that work for our company and hang out with them. I have been practicing with the band for the past couple of days in order to fill in for the tuba player again for the thing to send off the graduating class at the end of March. Next week there is a national holiday and the snow festival so i am looking forward to next weekend, i will have to take a lot of pictures.

The sun has been out for the past couple of days and has helped clean up and melt the roads. I think i will be okay to drive to Sapporo and stay in the company paid hotel for the weekend, then i will be able to go and get cheaper groceries for the week which is nice.

I forgot, i guess i should explain what setsubun is exactly. It literally means the separation of seasons. So in meaning there are four setsubun during the year- the equinoxes and solstices. But in practice there is only one, this is the one with the set day depicting the transition from winter to spring. The set date is February 3rd, sort of like a groundhog's day, but not really. I guess on the old style lunisolar calendar- the Chinese one- it would have corresponded to near the spring equinox.  and the Chinese New Year. But i don't know the exact logistics or history of the date. It was brought into Japan from China in the 8th century.  Oh well what it means isn't important, the important thing is what do you do on Setsubun. The phrase that is eponymous with Setsubun is "福は内、鬼は外″ which means "good fortune inside, ogres outside." Or " in with the good luck, out with the bad luck." While saying the phrase one will throw roasted soybeans(this action is called mamemaki 豆まき), or more modernly peanuts, either outside or at an Oni figure or an Oni impersonator with a mask or full costume. The practice is a purification ritual and is similar to Halloween in a sense that they believe that the spirit world became closer to the human world on this day and would have to scare and cleanse the spirits away. Further enforcing the Halloween similarity is the historical practice of some cross-dressing and costume wearing that some Geisha practice now sometimes. It seems to me to be in essence a purification ritual using beans for their powers, or even going to the shrine and praying with the beans and then throwing them; as well as a transference ritual in some aspects- i.e. a scapegoat ritual to put all the sickness and bad fortune on the beans or the Oni figure and get them out of the house. After the beans are thrown, they are eaten. The lucky practice is to eat one bean per every year of age and sometimes one extra "to grow on." Besides beans there is the Ehomaki (恵方巻き- lucky direction roll) that people eat and point them selves in the lucky direction based on the zodiac animal of that year and the direction that each of the twelve animals corresponds to- the rabbit of this year is South-South-East. It is a long uncut roll that is eaten as such compared to the slice rolls that they normally make.

A weird and not too important holiday, but it was nice to spend it with the kids and eat some peanuts (which are actually beans by definition).

Ehomaki

check the Wikipedia Link on it for more information
Setsubun 

Hope you all like the pics, i had to use some HTML in order for me to bypass not being able to upload pictures onto here.